Compaq Presario 5000, model 5BW220, made in 2000, WD 320G HD.
I'm trying to instal XP Home on a new WD hd. The hd came with a cd. I think it's an installation cd. On the CD it says: "Google Software, Drive Installation, Diagnositics, User Documentation, Google taskbar, Google Desktop, Picasa". On the cd it says: "If Windows is not installed boot from this CD". When I boot from the installation CD it goes through a number of steps then stops at: "Attempting PM ATA Identify-SN......Invalid Response" then the same text except PS is in place of PM with no response. I stopped running the cd at that point because it was taking so long. When I tried installing the XP Home OEM CD before trying the installation CD it went through the partitioning and then through the formatting, but before the formatting was complete I fell asleep. When I awoke the message: "Press any key to boot from CD...A disk read error occurred. Press Ctrl+Alt+Del to restart". Whatever I tried it just went back to the same message even after rebooting. Is the hd faulty or the XP Home installation cd, how long should the installation cd take to do it's thing, and is it necessary to use the hd installation cd before installing the o/s? I suspect a problem with the HD because there was a problem with bot cds. My understanding of computers is rudimentary. Thanks for any replies.

The first thing to do is exchange the HD for a replacement. The only times i have had any problems installing XP or Vista from a microsoft CD or DVD is when the hard drive was bad. I have been lucky there and have only had this happen 4 times.

SRX660